From the Very Beginning ....to the Troubled Times to come Before the Deluge...

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Monday, 24 March 2014

Elephants

Elephants: Please Don't Go

Charles Eisenstein

A week ago I was invited to join in a worldwide meditation
on behalf of the elephants in Africa, which are under renewed threat of
extinction. Ordinarily I am resistant to vigils, meditations, and "sending
light," because it feels like a cop-out, a substitute for doing something.
There is something obviously wrong with the attitude, "I won't do anything
to help you, but I will hold you in the light." And if I am unwilling or
unable to do something, I think it is better to face that truth than to imagine
I have acted by merely sitting there.

Yet I also understand the despair so many people feel as we
survey the depredations of the planet-wrecking machine, and our seeming
helplessness to stop it. Meditating on behalf of the elephants can be a salve
for that despair - but does it actually help the elephants, or only help us
feel better? Despite my resistance, I think it can actually help the elephants:
not as a substitute for action, but as a declaration to the universe of a
willingness to act. A meditation can say, "I want to do something but I
don't know what. Give me a way."

By sitting in a meditation for the elephants, or by holding
a person in the light, I am readying myself to act. Often, an opportunity
arises soon after that I might not have anticipated or imagined. I hold someone
in the light, and soon he, or someone else in a similar situation, offers
himself to me for assistance of some kind. The universe says, "Okay, we
hear you, here is a chance to act on your good will." If I act, then I
know my meditation was sincere. If I decline this invitation, I know I was
lying to myself. This is a deeper reason why I hesitate to join
meditations-for-the-cause. My plate is full already, and I don't want to offer
myself to causes I don't have time for.

On this occasion I said yes. Sure enough, the surprising
message I received from the elephants is compelling me to act, at least to the
extent that writing and speaking constitutes action. I would like to share with
you what the Elephant Oversoul told me - not that I especially believe in
oversouls as an ontological category. Nor do I disbelieve in them. It is a
convenient label to help describe my experience, which began with a strong feeling
of the presence of Elephant, and an almost-verbal communication from that
presence.

First, a few words on what, before my experience, I would
have called the "plight" of the elephants. While poaching for meat
and ivory remain big problems, the worst threat to the elephants today is
habitat destruction. Not only has development cut off their ancient migration
routes, herding then into increasingly confined places, but increased contact
with human settlements and agricultural operations causes friction and danger,
leading to pressure to "cull" the herds. When their natural habitats,
freedom to roam, and social structure are destroyed, elephants turn
"rogue," leading even their sympathizers to feel that they have no
choice but to kill them. Recent initiatives to turn vast tracts of African land
to palm oil plantations and other commodity crops threaten to exacerbate these
pressures. Elephants and their habitat are rapidly being converted into money;
some researchers fear they could be extinct from the wild in as little as five
years.

Why did I put "plight" in quotation marks? A
plight is a situation in which one is helpless to do anything but plead, to beg
for help or mercy, and one might indeed say that the elephants are helpless
victims of humanity's cruelty and greed. But this conception is contrary to the
communication I received that day at noon on a high mountaintop outside of
Santa Fe, New Mexico. After a few minutes of random thoughts, I felt the
presence of the Elephant, a vast and incredibly ancient being. I asked,
"What do you want?" The Elephant said, "We want you to ask us to
stay." There followed an upwelling of words and images to the following
effect:

Don't imagine that we are helpless to save ourselves. We can
manipulate reality in ways you cannot begin to imagine. We are leaving because
the way you treat us says that you don't want us. If our gifts are not welcome
to you, we will bow out.

I think most people would feel the same way, the way we feel
if we're working at a job where our contributions are not appreciated and we
are not respected. Perhaps some species do not care if we honor their gifts -
rats, maybe, termites, cockroaches - but elephants like whales and lions are
beings of great dignity, and will not stay on earth if we continue to
disrespect them.

All of this seems perversely anthropocentric - why should
human honoring of the elephants' gift matter more than any other species'
blessing - for indeed, the elephant is a keystone species in many African
ecosystems? It is not only human beings who will suffer from their loss, so why
should our attitude be more important than the warthogs'? I cannot answer this
with complete certainty, but I think that there are two reasons why it is we
humans from whom the elephants need to hear a plea to stay.

First, human beings are on the verge of entering our
species' adulthood, in which we are to become earth's steward, earth's partner,
earth's lover. Our coming-of-age ordeal is upon us, comprising the multiple
crises of our time, a subject I explore more deeply elsewhere. Anthropocentric
or not, we have taken on a role unique among all earth's species. No other
species has the power to destroy or transform landscapes and ecosystems as we
do. While it would be an exaggeration to say we might extinguish all life on earth,
we have already eliminated a vast number of species, and if habitat
destruction, ocean acidification, desertification, and other trends proceed
apace, we will surely eliminate many more. With small exaggeration, we might
say that the fate of the planet is in our hands. It is fitting, then, that the
plea to stay should come from us. I say plea, because indeed it is to humanity
that the word "plight" applies. Seeking to become nature's lords and
masters, we have instead so severed our connection with the source of life that
it is we who need nature's mercy.

Second, the elephants have a unique gift to offer humanity.
I can only speculate on what this may be, but I think they are somehow holders
of memory. Similarly to whales and dolphins, they use low-frequency rumblings
and stompings to transmit signals hundreds of miles through the earth, enabling
them to maintain a communication network, perhaps even a collective mind, with
other members of their species. I cannot explain this rationally, but when I heard
that they may go extinct, a certainty welled up within me: If the elephants go
extinct, there will be nuclear war. It is as if, through some shamanic magic,
they are preventing us from forgetting history (or forgetting ourselves) and
unleashing holocaust. A few elephants in zoos and game reserves won't be enough
- we need the elephant mind, the society of the elephant walking this earth.
Could it be that the Elephant is the embodiment of some vast and merciful
cosmic intelligence that is preventing us from killing ourselves with our own
cleverness before we reach maturity?

The healer Marie Levit offers a further perspective on the
gift of the Elephant:

The main spiritual qualities of elephants is their greatness
and "largeness." I believe that is what we are here to learn from
them. They are here to remind us of our own greatness. This is why they have
"great memory" - so they can remember of their sacred greatness and
remind those who has forgotten.

When our greatness disappears, elephants disappear as well,
as they feel that their main quality is not needed. Their conscious
disappearance is an awakening call for others. It's amazing that they are so
"large" that they choose to sacrifice themselves in order to remind
others of their largeness as well.

In my perception, this is what Ganesha story is about. In
that situation both Shiva and Shakti acted "small": Shiva wouldn't
give her space (what kind of God would do that?) and Shakti, in response
created a being who would protect her from her own man (what kind of Goddess
would need protection?) That's when elephant decides to sacrifice itself and
becomes Ganesha -- to remind gods of their greatness every time they look at
his large head.

I believe that is exactly why elephants choose to disappear
at this time of history. With the crisis of everything, people forget more and
more of their greatness, go into protection mode, like Shakti, and act small
like Shiva. I believe that the way to "save" elephants is to fully
receive their gift they are here to share with us, and remember our own
greatness. By embracing the "elephant consciousness" within ourselves
and Creation, we will support this energy on every level, including its
embodied expression, and the elephants will have no reason to disappear.

If these musings are unconvincing or perhaps repellent to
the reader, I might be tempted to take the usual Discovery Channel approach,
and appeal to pity instead. Such an appeal might say, "Well, perhaps the
elephants really aren't so important in the grand scheme of things, not
compared to the big environmental issues of the planet. But they are such
majestic creatures, it would be a shame if they disappeared. And they are so
intelligent, and what is happening to them is really awful." I won't make
this kind of appeal though, because it doesn't speak forth the urgency I feel.
The loss of the elephants wouldn't be a pity or a shame, it would be a
catastrophe whose proportions transcend rational explanation.

The ideology of the separate self that we have lived under
for centuries says that we can insulate ourselves from the effects of our
actions on others. On the collective level, it says that we can do the same to
nature, that we can always engineer our way out of every crisis. If the
elephants disappear, well, that's too bad, but we'll manage. This ideology,
however, is becoming obsolete, as physics, ecology, psychology, and
spirituality affirm the interdependent nature of the self, the self of
inter-beingness. Accordingly, what happens to the elephants is also happening
to ourselves, and their loss would tear an irreparable hole in the human
psyche.

You needn't take my word for it. Read the book Elephant
Whisperer, or watch some of the videos on the Corelight page referenced below,
and you will understand that these beings are indeed part of ourselves, and
that their loss is our own. This connection, and not rational concerns about
ecosystems, is the real motivation for our desire to save the elephants. The
science and all the other arguments give the mind, which is steeped in the
belief systems of Separation, permission to believe what the heart already
knows.

How, then, do we ask the elephants to stay? Our request must
be communicated on multiple levels, not just as a mental or verbal asking,
however heartfelt. Indeed, the means of this asking comprise all the things
that activists and conservationists are doing today, the practical work on the
ground. The mental plea to stay is a beginning, an invitation for opportunities
to act in material and social reality. If you would like to do that, here are
some resources to get started:

Corelight: combines hands-on action with an attunement to
the spiritual importance of the elephants.

Save the Elephants: based in Kenya. The worst slaughter is
happening in central Africa.

If you read about the situation and feel powerless to do
anything about it, then perhaps it is time to try what I did, to meditate on
the circumstances of the elephants and, with your heart and mind, plead with
them to stay. If you do so, I expect that soon you will have an opportunity to
do something real for them, if perhaps only indirectly. Something will call to
you.

The elephant extermination is part and parcel of a whole way
of life, a way of thinking and being that encompasses the money system, science,
religion, and more. We all have a part to play in creating a world in which
elephants are no longer slaughtered and habitats no longer converted to
commodity export crops. Each of us has something to receive from the elephants,
and each of us has something to give to them as well, to create a world in
which elephants are welcome. For one thing to change, everything must change;
if one thing changes, everything will. What is your part? What can you do? You
might feel paralyzed in the face of the enormity of the world's problems,
powerless and despairing. That is the time to bow into service and ask the
world, as I asked Elephant, What do you want?

about me

A new counter-culture is now spreading across the planet, a movement dedicated to protesting at the outlandish behaviour of the control freaks, with their surveillance, eavesdropping, secrecy and lies. Their greed and belligerent sabre rattling and their industries of war. The dream is to replace these sociopaths with Love!

I wish this blog to be a small part of this - We must be the change.

We will be set to task to rebuild our world and our planet from centuries of decimation and destruction brought on by the fallacy, the belief that we once tragically and collectively embraced thousands of years ago – the mistaken notion that we are separate from one another and everything else on the planet and in the universe. We will finally recognize that the truth is just the opposite – we are all one with everything on the planet and in the universe. We are spiritual beings, infinite consciousness simply having a human experience, and as soon we come to fully recognize and understand this, it will then finally be time for us to fly – to shine in all of our infinite, glorious possibility...